Category: Life with Pratts

Twofer Tuesday

Here’s the exciting follow-up to last night’s suspenseful post. I managed to get both the refrigerator and garage door working.

  • Refrigerator: With the fridge turned off and emptied out I could see through a hole in a sheet metal panel at the back of the freezer section that the coils were iced over. (The dehumidifier in the basement will ice up like this if I leave it set too high in the fall.) With a small hex wrench and some effort, I pulled off the panel, then I used Carol’s hair dryer to melt the ice enough that I could pull it off in big chunks. When the coils were clear I put the panel back on, Carol got the food back in, and a couple of hours after turning it on the fridge compartment was below 40 and the freezer was below zero, so I know the compressor is still working. My guess is the defrost cycle got messed up because of the days-long power failure, but I really don’t know.
  • Garage door: The motor was clicking and humming, but it wasn’t moving the belt. The door has been hitting the floor too hard since the torsion springs were replaced last month by Precision Garage Door (the outfit that I will never use again). I suspected this was knocking the switch out of kilter that turns off the motor. I pulled the release cord to disconnect the motor from the door bracket, then I slid the switch back and forth and opened and closed the door manually a few times. I got up on the stepladder, opened the back of the motor, and adjusted the closing force for a lighter landing. After the release cord was reset I hit the switch and the door opened. When closing, the door now touches the floor gently.

Tonight’s episode: Double Trouble

When I got home from work I was greeted with two emergencies: the garage door opener — again! — and the refrigerator. The garage door motor just clicks and hums and the refrigerator sounds like it’s working but it isn’t cooling. There’s nothing I can do about the door, but I had Carol empty the fridge and I discovered that the coils are coated in ice.

Comfort tune

Eric and I got the leaves raked up this weekend, it’s a Sunday Autumn evening, I’m in a contemplative mood, and this recording evokes a strong feeling of nostalgia in me.

[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Nov/MR1.mp3|titles=Moon River by Henry Mancini]

Home, Cold Home

There’s still no electricity at home. The utility company says it should be back on by Wednesday night, but if it isn’t we’ll be looking for a hotel room. I’ve got the fireplace going in the evening, and I can run space heaters off the portable generator. I have a 5-gallon gas container, but I wish the generator’s tank were bigger. We have oil lamps, and they work great. I can see why sperm whales were hunted to near extinction before petroleum took over. My GE Superadio III, 17 years old, has been our primary source of entertainment.

Compliments of great guy Mark Sinnott, here’s a follow-up pic from the Albany Comic Con, with me on the right, with Denro and Joe Sinnott. Men with caps! As always, I make a point of not looking directly into a camera flash, which is painful for somebody who has lattice degeneration.

XPerienced system

It was ten years old today that Windows XP went on sale to the public. Prior to its release I’d been running XP at work for a year in beta form, and knowing it would be a winner I bought a Compaq Presario 5300 desktop computer for Carol on October 25, 2001, as an early birthday present. Three years later, it became Eric’s system when I bought Carol a Compaq Presario 2210 laptop computer. Like the desktop computer it has 512 MB memory and a 40 GB drive, except the desktop came with only 256 MB and 20 GB.

Over the years I’d purchased two Dell desktop systems, and both suffered major motherboard failures, which means I’ll never buy another Dell. Meanwhile, both of the Presarios continue to chug along. Carol is still using the laptop and has no complaints and the desktop, with a USB hard drive attached, is in the basement ripping CDs and running Logitech’s free music server software.

Logitech Squeezebox Server

Microsoft will continue supporting Windows XP through April 8, 2014. There are two Windows 7 64-bit systems in the house now, but I have never used Windows Vista at home. Having used Vista at work, I knew it was a clunker.

P.S. This is post number 2500.